Gremlin Industries

Gremlin Industries was an American arcade game manufacturer active from 1970 to 1983, based in San Diego, California. It was acquired by Sega in 1978, and afterwards was known as Gremlin/Sega or Sega/Gremlin. Among Sega/Gremlin's most notable games are Blockade and Head On, as well as being the North American distributors for Frogger and Zaxxon. The company's name was subsequently changed to Sega Electronics in 1982, before its operations were closed in 1983.

Sega later released emulated and playable version of some of Sega/Gremlin games as vault material for the Sega Ages and Sega Genesis Collection series.

Gremlin was founded in 1970 as a contract engineering firm by Harry Frank Fogleman and Carl E. Grindle. The company was intended to be named "Grindleman Industries" as a portmanteau of their last names, but an employee of the Delaware Secretary of State's office misheard the name over the phone, so the company was incorporated as Gremlin instead. In 1973, Gremlin became a manufacturer of coin-operated wall games with their first release Play Ball (1973). Gremlin joined the video game industry in 1976 by releasing its first video arcade game entitled Blockade (1976).

In 1977, Gremlin released a home computer under a subsidiary, Noval, Inc. Called the Noval 760, the computer was built into a wooden office desk, with the computer portion of the desk's top able to pivot in and out of view. It sold poorly and was discontinued in 1979.

In 1978, Gremlin was acquired by Sega Enterprises Inc. and their games acquired the label of Gremlin/Sega or Sega/Gremlin. Following the Sega purchase, Gremlin released games from both Sega and other Japanese companies. Among these video games were Namco's Gee Bee (1978), Nichibutsu's Moon Cresta (1980) and Super Moon Cresta (1980), Nintendo's Space Firebird (1980), and Konami's Frogger (1981).

In 1981, Gremlin leased the first building in Rancho Bernardo's Technology Park, which they moved into in 1982 as their main manufacturing facility. The estimated cost of the building was US$10 million and was the plant where games like Zaxxon (1982), Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator (1983), and Congo Bongo (1983) were manufactured.

In 1982, the name of the company was changed to Sega Electronics to better strengthen the Sega brand name in the United States. However, the company entered a rapid decline beginning in mid-1982, due to overproduction issues which ended the golden age of arcade video games.

In August 1983, the arcade manufacturing assets of the company were sold to Bally Manufacturing. Through the purchase, Bally/Midway acquired Sega's technology for laserdisc video games, principally Astron Belt as well as later games Galaxy Ranger (1983) and Albegas (1983). Bally gained the right of first refusal to publish arcade games by the Japanese Sega Enterprises, Ltd. in the United States for two years, and released games such as Up 'N Down, Future Spy, and Flicky.